‘Ugly but . . . important’: the Albanian Hoard and the making of the archaeological treasure in the early twentieth century

This paper deploys the Metropolitan Museum's Albanian (or Avar) Treasure as a case study to explore the role and value assigned to the named treasure during the early twentieth century, a moment when Americans – most notably J.P. Morgan – were among the wealthiest and most avid collectors of Byzantine and medieval art. Outlining the market conditions for such treasures, the archaeological practices that authenticated them, and the art historical categories that gave them meaning, the paper demonstrates the extent to which the archaeological treasure was a social creation built by various players: finders, dealers, scholars, museums and collectors.     

Margaret Beaufort,Royal Tapestries,and Confinement at the Tudor Court

The English royal household ordinances document the important role tapestries played in Tudor court ceremony. This paper re-examines one specific aspect of the 1493 ordinances: whether or not Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, dictated the textile practices surrounding royal childbirth. Once widely believed to have done so, scholars have abandoned the idea for lack of evidence. The issue is more complicated than it seems, in part because of longstanding bibliographic error and also because texts associated with two events involving Margaret — the birth of Princess Margaret and the publication of William Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine — suggest that she was highly attuned to the importance of royal spectacle as mandated by the household ordinances.     

Hosting the king: hospitality and the royal iter in tenth-century England

Traditional studies of royal itinerancy have depended on locating the king’s progress through his kingdom(s) as precisely as possible and it should therefore not surprise that the iter regis in pre-conquest England has received relatively little attention, since Anglo-Saxon diplomas only rarely record their date and place of issue, making the establishment of the royal itinerary all but impossible. However, more recent studies, particularly by German scholars, have moved away from the earlier attention to the concrete details of the royal iter and focus more on the effects of itinerancy as a method of rulership, viewing itinerancy as a central part of royal ritual. This study argues that if we investigate itinerancy in tenth-century England from this standpoint, we can throw new light onto the subject. Contemporary sources reveal that in England as in France and Germany the iter regis was of great importance, with symbolic acts of feasting and gift-giving accompanying royal visits. The attention given to these ritualised acts in contemporary sources suggests, moreover, that Anglo-Saxon kingship possessed an important ‘charismatic’ quality, which deserves further investigation.     

The Codex Mexicanus Genealogy: Binding the Mexica Past and the Colonial Present

Created in late sixteenth-century Mexico City, the Codex Mexicanus is an extensive bound book of miscellaneous contents, including a rare pictorial genealogy of the Tenochca dynastic lineage that traces the family line from its ancient origins to its colonial descendants. The Codex Mexicanus, as a whole, represents an attempt by its patrons and contributors to reconcile the Mexica past and the Christian present, and the inclusion of a genealogy in the larger book suggests that the Mexica royal house was believed to play an important role in this process. By providing a reading of the genealogy and comparing it with others, both native and European, I show that it presents a unique view of the Tenochca royal house that emphasizes its integrity and antiquity and in so doing effectively excludes outsiders who, at the time the codex was being created, were increasingly making claims on Mexica privileges without the proper family connections.     

汉新禅代中的刘歆

刘歆为西汉王朝宗室,又为王莽新朝功臣,是学术造诣高深的经学家,又是将儒家理想制度付诸实践的改革家。汉新之际名儒贤达党附王莽者甚众,刘歆不幸被过多地关注和指责,应与此多重身份有关。其与父刘向在政治上非真正对立,二人的基本倾向应是一致的;其与王莽之关系,于汉新禅代之作用,于王莽改制之影响,也远不像传统认识的那样密切、那样重要、那样深广。用“不忠”、“不孝”指责他有失公道。     

‘Queen’s Day – TV’s Day’: the British monarchy and the media industries

In contemporary British history, Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 is typically imagined and narrated as the moment where television was anchored as a national cultural form. In addition, it is well documented by commentators and scholars that during preparation for the coronation, politicians and the palace had reservations that live television might fracture the carefully constructed mystique of monarchy. This article revisits the coronation to consider why and how television was perceived as a watershed moment for both monarchy and television, and what difference this has made to royal representations since. Using the work of Michael Warner, it argues that the mediated intimacies facilitated by television as a new cultural form encouraged viewers to enact participatory and active processes of spectatorship as royal ‘publics’, who are brought into being through being addressed. That is, it was the act of emphasising the centrality of television’s role in the coronation, and in reinforcing the apparent distance between monarchy and (popular) media, that these ‘meanings’ of the coronation were constructed in the public and historical imaginary.     

Royal inauguration and liturgical culture in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099–1187

ABSTRACT

While modern scholars have often assumed that the models of liturgical kingship which prevailed in Latin Christendom during the Early Middle Ages became less prominent in the Central Middle Ages, more recent work has suggested that royal dynasties including those of France and England maintained practices of liturgical kingship between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. This article contributes to this recent wave of historiography by examining the image of monarchy which was adopted in the kingdom of Jerusalem between 1099 and 1187. It takes as its focus the inauguration ceremonies and associated royal rituals performed by the monarch during this period, considering aspects of each ceremony, including the various constituent rituals, the place or places in which the rituals were held, the prelates who presided, the identity of other individuals who were recorded as having taken part, and the dates upon which the ceremonies were held. It is suggested that the royal dynasty of Jerusalem was attuned to the liturgical potential of inauguration ceremonies, and that it adopted rituals which were aimed at fostering consensus among the political community of the kingdom. The monarchy created an image of liturgical kingship which combined Western practices with elements that were unique to Jerusalem.     

Contextualising the papal censure of the Disputationes de Indiarum Iure (1642). The consultores of the Congregation of the Index

This study discusses hitherto unknown aspects concerning the papal censure of the work by the Spanish jurist Juan de Solórzano Pereira, author of the two-volume treatise on Derecho indiano, known as the Disputationes de Indiarum Iure. Immediately after the publication of its second part in 1639, the Curia (under the government of Pope Urban VIII Barberini) prompted the Congregation of the Index in Rome to examine Solórzano's seminal treatise and, eventually, condemn its section about Spain's royal patronage of the Church. By looking at the circumstances of the censure (e.g. the early ‘leak’ orchestrated by the Congregation, the other reports about the censure), the present work aims at bringing to the attention of scholars the Solórzano file conserved in the Vatican archives. Considering both the reasons of the censure and the circumstances under which it developed, the present study sheds new light on the complex relationship between Spain and the Papacy in the first half of the seventeenth century and beyond.     

The Rhetoric of Convention: The Foundational Saul Narratives (1 Samuel 9–11) Reconsidered

Biblical scholars have applied new methodologies to the royal narratives in the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua–Kings) as viable resources for recovering authentic historical information regarding the monarchic cultures of ancient Israel and their impact on the development of Israelite religion. The present study considers anew the narratives regarding Israel's first king, Saul son of Kish. A recurring motif in these narratives is the appeal to socio‐religious convention, which is suggestive of a rhetorical strategy among the authors that sought to situate the Saulide royal lineage in familiar traditions that the institution of kingship was perceived as disrupting.     

Law and the peasant: rural society and justice in Carolingian Italy

Comparative analysis of the most important Carolingian‐period Italian placiti dealing with the defence of freedom allows us to reconstruct the approach taken by various large monasteries as they attempted to transform their landholding into coercive power over people, by converting dependent freemen into slaves. Similarly, it reveals the strenuous defence mounted by the freemen who were thus threatened, who were clearly perfectly aware that a downgrading of their legal status would be far more serious for them than an economic downgrading. It also permits an analysis of placiti as sites for the representation of public power, in which the ideological model of the king as ‘protector of the weak’ was often scuppered by the ability of many potentes to use for their own advantage either the presence of royal officials, or those very legal processes which were supposed to guarantee protection of the pauperes.     

The role of the Parlement de Paris in the ratification and registration of royal acts during the reign of Charles VI

The following article corrects the mistaken assumption held by a number of historians that during the reign of Charles VI of France it was necessary for the Parlement de Paris to publish and register all important royal ordinances before they could be executed. Individual cases are discussed to show the nature of the prerogatives of the Parlement and the methods used for the ratification and registration of royal acts.     

Royal burial and the cult of kingship in France and England, 1060–1330

In the late-eleventh and early twelfth centuries, French and English royal burials were relatively unceremonial, low-key affairs, a contrast with the obsequies of other contemporary rulers such as the Holy Roman emperors. One reason for that may be the dominance of reforming ecclesiastics in arranging the funeral rites in England and France; another, the importance attached by the monarchs to obtaining personalised intercession from ascetic monks. By the early fourteenth century, however, the French and English sovereigns were commemorated after death in magnificent ceremonies and monuments. In the intervening centuries, those kings and their followers had shown a growing interest in the creation and promotion of royal saint-cults; in the honouring of royal remains; in public and splendid funeral ceremonies and lawish tombs; and in the creation and development of imposing burial-churches at Saint-Denis and Westminster. During this time there was an increasing emphasis upon the image and panoply of monarchy in both kingdoms which was rooted to a large extent in the personal and political rivalry of their rulers. The new splendours of royal burials can be seen as one important part of those developments.     

The meaning of El Roi and the mythological dimension in Genesis 16

Abstract

This article discusses the literary debt of the story of Hagar in Genesis 16 to the Ugaritic text KTU 1.23, suggesting that behind the present tale lie ancient royal ideological motifs. These have a bearing on the present form of the story, ans suggest a message of hope to an exilic readership. The divine epithet Roi is explained as “seen”, expressing Hagar's surprise at surviving a vision of God.     

The secret of my succession: dynasty and crisis in Vandal North Africa

The system of royal succession in the Vandal kingdom of North Africa has long been regarded as idiosyncratic within the early medieval west, but its fullest implications have rarely been investigated closely. The present article examines the origins of succession by agnatic seniority under the strong rule of King Geiseric, and argues that it was one of several innovations intended to establish the emergent Hasding royal house against other aristocratic challenges. The article goes on to explore the consequences of this law in the two major dynastic crises of the Vandal kingdom: under Huneric in c.481 and under Hilderic in 530. In both cases, the standard narratives of events are challenged, and with them assumptions about the ‘constitutional’ status of Geiseric's law of succession.     

The Clanking of Medieval Chains: Extra-Judicial Banishment in the British Empire

Banishment in English law was circumscribed by the Magna Carta and habeas corpus and prohibited except by legal procedure. The Transportation Act of 1718 legalised exile and enshrined convictism in law. The case of Bancoult (No.2), 2008, which considered the banishment of the Ilois of Chagos Island in the 1960s, brought consideration of banishment into the twentieth century and opened the royal prerogative to modern scrutiny. What becomes clear from this case is that banishment relied on royal prerogative without resort to legal process and was surprisingly routine throughout the British Empire. This article considers the implications of this case and some of the wider history of banishment in the empire.     

Readings on Thai Justice: A Review Essay

Abstract

How far can judges hope to address Thailand’s political problems? This article reviews six Thai-language books dealing with various aspects of the judiciary, exploring the historical and intellectual origins of the institution. Thirayudh Boonmee’s 2006 call for a judicialisation of politics – his own elaboration of two important royal speeches – builds on judges’ longstanding belief that they are acting “in the name of the King”. But their narrow, formalistic training ill-equips them to exercise broad powers. The article contrasts judges’ idealised self-understandings (as seen in a popular book on how to become a judge by Natthapakon Phitchayapanyatham, and in the 2010 Judicial Code of Ethics) with revisionist perspectives on the judiciary developed by critical scholars Nidhi Eoseewong, Piyabutr Saengkanokkul, and Somchai Preechasilapakul. Whereas judges may imagine themselves to be acting directly on behalf of the monarchy, revisionist scholars insist that since 1932 judges have formed part of a modern democratic order, in which they need to be more transparent and accountable. A close reading of these books reveals that there is no shared agreement in Thai society about the nature or basis of judicial authority.     

Henry II,liturgical patronage and the birth of the ‘Romano‐German Pontifical’

Variously acclaimed as coepiscopus, saint and Mönchskönig, Henry II of Germany has always had a reputation as a quasi‐religious figure. This article goes a step further, appending to his résumé the creation of the wildly successful liturgical tradition known as the ‘Romano‐German Pontifical’. Formerly dated to the tenth century, its major ordines are here argued to have been cultivated in royal circles in the years 1002–9, before being compiled for the first time as a gift for the new Bamberg Cathedral. The tradition is shown to reflect the king’s concerns, scholarly, political and confessional, as well as projecting an idealistic, Bamberg‐esque notion of Romano‐German unity.     

The impact of royal government in the French Ardennes: the evidence of the 1247 enquête

Louis IX's enquête of 1247 was designed to investigate the misdeeds of loyal royal officials, and the reports of the cases investigated by the enquêteurs reveal the impact of royal government at the village level. The complaints heard in the upland Ardennes voice the protests of a remote region as it found itself increasingly subject to royal control. The local agents of the crown, usually outsiders, were characterised by an arbitrariness of procedure and a disregard for local feeling and custom which suggests that, in this area, royal justice was seen as a violent intruder as much as a preserver of order.